3 - Frankish Gaul to 814

Summary

the central theme in the history of eighth-century Francia is the rising power of its Carolingian rulers, above all of Charles Martel (715–41), Pippin III (741–68) and Charlemagne (768–814). Not only was the whole of Francia convulsed by the Carolingians’ fight for domination; their success also made them the focal point of a tradition of historical writing which was king centred and increasingly court sponsored. The three principal sources for this history are the Continuations of the Chronicle of Fredegar, the Prior Metz Annals and Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne. Given the partisan nature of these works, we must naturally guard against distortion in their view of the ‘rise of the Carolingians’. It is clear, for instance, that by the early ninth century, writers of history were reordering the Merovingian past in order to date Carolingian domination back into the seventh century and so present their seizure of the throne from the Merovingians in 751 as the overdue recognition of a long-established supremacy. The clearest statement of this view is in the Prior Metz Annals, written c. 806. This work took the victory of Charlemagne’s great-grandfather Pippin II over the hitherto dominant Neustrians at the battle of Tertry in 687 to mark the inception of Carolingian rule, and so it has remained in many a history textbook down to this day. In reality, however, in 687 Pippin did not so much overturn the Neustrian regime of the Merovingians as join it.